We’re putting a pause on our first Senate and House ratings for the 2022 cycle, but it’s not for the reason you might be thinking. After whiffing on the House projection this year as President Donald Trump overperformed expectations, I floated the idea of forgoing race ratings in elections whenever he appears on the ballot.
Trump won’t be on the ballot in two years, however, unless he challenges New York Sen. Chuck Schumer in the general election or Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in the GOP primary, but we are waiting to release our 2022 Senate ratings until sometime early next year.
Why?
Because it’s OK to take a deep breath. Heck, the 2020 elections won’t even be over until the Jan. 5 runoffs in Georgia, so we won’t even know if the incumbent in Georgia running for a full term in 2022 will be Republican Kelly Loeffler or Democrat Raphael Warnock. We could all use a bit of a break.
Don’t get me wrong. The 2022 battle for the Senate is important. I wrote about it more than a month ago, and even way back in February. But the world will survive at least a few more weeks without a race-by-race breakdown of campaigns that won’t be settled until nearly two years from now.
It also doesn’t mean there isn’t interesting news in the next set of Senate races. Almost-former-Rep. Mark Walker announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in North Carolina, the same state where Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, is reportedly also considering a bid.
But one of the biggest lessons from the 2020 Senate races is that partisanship is usually the strongest, and maybe most important, factor when...